SSL
is an open and not proprietary protocol of secure
communications that has been proposed from Corporation
Netscape Communications to the World Wide Consortium
(W3C) as a standard for the Internet world. Through
SSL it is possible to make encrypted transactions
inside of high level protocols as HTTP, NNTP and FTP;
for example it is possible to visualize a WWW page
doing that all what defines the page comes transferred
in encrypted way and therefore is inaccessible to
third parts. The SSL protocol concurs with the user’s
computer to verify the authenticity of the server
(every server that uses SSL must have installed at
least a digital certificate that identifies it), allows
to encrypt the data transferred from the user’s
computer to the server or vice versa, and, if requested
from the server, concurs to verify the authenticity
of the client-side certificates (user’s computer
authentication). SSL currently is implemented from
the greater part of Internet browsers like Microsoft
Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera, and
from the more important server platforms. |